The fact that the FBI has issued a warning for 4 July is common knowledge. Claiming personal contact with the Fibbies as if it gives you legitimacy (a contradiction in itself) to issue a breathless post that spooks the uninformed is ludicrous. The FBI has in the past tried to "reach out" to militia leaders but only when they're a. worried about their own hides (a la Freeman Standoff) or b. trying to shake somebody's tree to see what falls out. If this guy actually has a personal relationship with an FBI agent, were I him I wouldn't be admitting it.

In this environment, it always pays to be watchful. In fact, you're more likely to observe a predatory FBI SWAT team at any given time than you are an ISIS lone wolf. But if you see a Jihadi on the attack, do us all a favor and shoot the bastard then call the local cops for cleanup. Don't legitimize the FBI, even by hyperventilated rumor.

My son sent me the video below of a recent Haka by a New Zealand military unit.

This is the translation:

We are ready, yes we are ready If we the warriors of the Second First should go to war Beware enemy, beware! Those of you who wish to do battle with us, where are you? Come stand face to face with us and we will strike you down Be strong warriors of the Second First We will gather the energy from the Earth to strengthen our bodies to destroy our enemies Rise up, soldiers of Second First to the call of battle We will fight and destroy our enemies and send them to the dark pits of hell!

Haka is used throughout New Zealand by many, not only Māori, to demonstrate their collective thoughts. There is a haka for each of the Services, as well as the Defence Force. Units with the NZ Army have their own haka. This video shows the soldiers of 2/1 RNZIR Battalion performing their Unit haka, powerfully acknowledging the lives and feats of their fallen comrades as they come onto the Unit's parade ground. It is also an emotive farewell for they will leave via the waharoa (the carved entrance way) for the very last time.

Haka --sometimes termed a posture dance could also be described as a chant with actions. There are various forms of haka; some with weapons some without, some have set actions others may be 'free style.' Haka is used by Māori (indigenous people of New Zealand) for a myriad of reasons; to challenge or express defiance or contempt, to demonstrate approval or appreciation, to encourage or to discourage, to acknowledge feats and achievements, to welcome, to farewell, as an expression of pride, happiness or sorrow. There is almost no inappropriate occasion for haka; it is an outward display of inner thoughts and emotions. Within the context of an occasion it is abundantly clear which emotion is being expressed.

In other words, the majority is arrogant, unrestrained, and thus not to be respected. It has an “extravagant conception of judicial supremacy.” “Those who founded our country would not recognize the majority’s conception of the judicial role.” And “The Court’s accumulation of power does not occur in a vacuum. It comes at the expense of the people. And they know it.” Why not just tell the Religious Right to buy pitchforks and blowtorches?

"Pitchforks and blowtorches?" Pitchforks and torches, perhaps. These are the hallmarks of peasant mobs. But blowtorches? Of course, blowtorches are often used by the secret police agencies of collectivist dictatorships as interrogation tools, so perhaps he's just falling back on the familiar.

Count De Monet - Sir, the peasants are revolting!

King Louis - You said it. They stink on ice.

-- History of the World, Part One.

But, I don't think we need a Supreme Court justice to tell us to buy pitchforks and torches, if that's what he means. Besides, that's so 16th Century (although he betrays himself with this insulting allusion to the religious folks of this country as peasantry). Today's peasants are more likely to use .30-06 deer rifles with much greater direct effect upon the tyrants' continued access to oxygen. Nor do we need anyone to tell us that this past week's events constitute the dictionary definition of treason to the Founders' Republic.

Of course the Founders, who were themselves considered traitors by the King for mere "treasonable utterances," were very careful to limit the meaning of the term in the Constitution:

The Treason Clause traces its roots back to an English statute enacted during the reign of Edward III (1327–1377). This statute prohibited levying war against the king, adhering to his enemies, or contemplating his death. Although this law defined treason to include disloyal and subversive thoughts, it effectively circumscribed the crime as it existed under the Common Law. During the thirteenth century, the crime of treason encompassed virtually every act contrary to the king's will and became a political tool of the Crown. Building on the tradition begun by Edward III, the Founding Fathers carefully delineated the crime of treason in Article III of the U.S. Constitution, narrowly defining its elements and setting forth stringent evidentiary requirements.

Under Article III, Section 3, of the Constitution, any person who levies war against the United States or adheres to its enemies by giving them Aid and Comfort has committed treason within the meaning of the Constitution. The term aid and comfort refers to any act that manifests a betrayal of allegiance to the United States, such as furnishing enemies with arms, troops, transportation, shelter, or classified information. If a subversive act has any tendency to weaken the power of the United States to attack or resist its enemies, aid and comfort has been given.

The Treason Clause applies only to disloyal acts committed during times of war. Acts of dis-loyalty during peacetime are not considered treasonous under the Constitution. Nor do acts of Espionage committed on behalf of an ally constitute treason. For example, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of espionage, in 1951, for helping the Soviet Union steal atomic secrets from the United States during World War II. The Rosenbergs were not tried for treason because the United States and the Soviet Union were allies during World War II.

Under Article III a person can levy war against the United States without the use of arms, weapons, or military equipment. Persons who play only a peripheral role in a conspiracy to levy war are still considered traitors under the Constitution if an armed rebellion against the United States results. (Emphasis supplied, MBV) -- Free Legal Dictionary.

Which brings me back to that definition of Constitutional treason above: "Persons who play only a peripheral role in a conspiracy to levy war are still considered traitors under the Constitution if an armed rebellion against the United States results." There is no doubt that our collectivist enemies are engaged in a conspiracy to overthrow the Constitution and the rule of law it codifies. As I have said and written many times, the Founders would declare them to be domestic enemies of the Constitution. It is they who are the revolutionaries in rebellion against the Founders' Republic. And there is no doubt that they seek, by force of arms if necessary, to accomplish their purpose. It is perhaps ironic that they have, by their successful, infinitely patient sedition, achieved control over the government's arms to work their conspiracy upon the liberty, property and lives of the people. I'm not sure the Founders expected that when they crafted the Constitution but it is nonetheless true.

So, who are the "traitors," them or us? That will be decided by the outcome of the civil war they seek to start.

This is a dangerous game, but it may have worked. Conservatives feel betrayed by Roberts, as perhaps they should. But it’s possible that when we look back on the first 15 years of the 21st century, it will be remembered as the time the Democrats vowed to blow up this country’s democratic institutions unless they got their way. And that’s not “a very good thing.”

I think it’s time to have a show down while we still have any semblance of a country left. Obama Care rip offs, and degenerate, unnatural definitions of marriage, were not lawfully enacted statutes. They do not serve our country for the common good, so I would advise all veterans to stand by. They did not rescind our oath to protect the people from all enemies -- both foreign and domestic, unless of course, you like living under a totalitarian cesspool.

“Perhaps the most colorful example in my district is that students have been caught bringing–and even selling – salt, pepper, and sugar in school to add taste to perceived bland and tasteless cafeteria food,” said John S. Payne, the president of Blackford County School Board of Trustees in Hartford City, Indiana.

The world will be unable to fight the next global financial crash as central banks have used up their ammunition trying to tackle the last crises, the Bank of International Settlements has warned. The so-called central bank of central banks launched a scathing critique of global monetary policy in its annual report. The BIS claimed that central banks have backed themselves into a corner after repeatedly cutting interest rates to shore up their economies.

Which may be a slander on the dog. Am taking the rest of the Lord's day off. There's a lot I posted yesterday, including my posts on Reset and Nuking Their Own Legitimacy. Also, folks still awaiting tee shirts please see the post related to that subject.

It seems to be random and others have no problem at all. If you have such a problem, just drop me an email with your comment, the post it refers to and how you want to be called, and I will manually post it.

Saturday, June 27, 2015

No, the sky is not falling — not yet, anyway — but with the Supreme Court ruling constitutionalizing same-sex marriage, the ground under our feet has shifted tectonically. It is hard to overstate the significance of the Obergefell decision — and the seriousness of the challenges it presents to orthodox Christians and other social conservatives. Voting Republican and other failed culture war strategies are not going to save us now. . .

But when a Supreme Court majority is willing to invent rights out of nothing, it is impossible to have faith that the First Amendment will offer any but the barest protection to religious dissenters from gay rights orthodoxy. Indeed, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito explicitly warned religious traditionalists that this decision leaves them vulnerable. Alito warns that Obergefell “will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy,” and will be used to oppress the faithful “by those who are determined to stamp out every vestige of dissent.”

The warning to conservatives from the four dissenters could hardly be clearer or stronger. So where does that leave us? For one, we have to accept that we really are living in a culturally post-Christian nation. The fundamental norms Christians have long been able to depend on no longer exist. To be frank, the court majority may impose on the rest of the nation a view widely shared by elites, but it is also a view shared by a majority of Americans. There will be no widespread popular resistance to Obergefell. This is the new normal.

For another, LGBT activists and their fellow travelers really will be coming after social conservatives. The Supreme Court has now, in constitutional doctrine, said that homosexuality is equivalent to race. The next goal of activists will be a long-term campaign to remove tax-exempt status from dissenting religious institutions. The more immediate goal will be the shunning and persecution of dissenters within civil society. . .

Obergefell is a sign of the times, for those with eyes to see. This isn’t the view of wild-eyed prophets wearing animal skins and shouting in the desert. It is the view of four Supreme Court justices, in effect declaring from the bench the decline and fall of the traditional American social, political, and legal order.

Dreher's solution is to accept it and pray. I'm certainly not going to gainsay the value of prayer, but the persecution of Christians (or Jews or any other religion for that matter) in the name of political correctness can and must be resisted, even if by force of arms. These people are going to be coming at us with the naked force of state violence. Such violence can and must be resisted, and not just with prayer. (I was talking with a friend on the phone just today and he can't believe that they are so stupid as to mess with people's fundamental religious beliefs, characterizing it as suicidal. I don't disagree.)

And I have news for our would-be oppressors. When you come at us with state violence to seize our churches, jail our pastors, you are going to lose because we will make it not worth your while to oppress us. And then, after we've won, we're going to press the reset button.

I was having this conversation with a reader the other day in reference to the firearm laws we are breaking in the various states and he asked me what we were going to do about previous infringements, going back to GCA 68 and the NFA of 1934. I told him, when they start the shooting we don't quit until we have pushed the reset button on the last 100 plus years of infringements. They lose it all -- the Federal Reserve, fiat currency, the income tax, all the gun laws, all the nanny state fascism, the murder of innocents on demand, the tortured rendering of the Interstate Commerce clause, the bloated federal bureaucracy, everything. EVERYTHING.

Our enemies will lie and say that we want to roll back the civil rights laws, put gays back in the closet and re-enslave black folks but that is a lie. We believe that the Constitution extends to everyone regardless of race, creed, color or religion -- BUT WITHOUT PREFERRED CLASSES. In our Constitutional Republic, some animals are NOT more equal than others. At this remove, nobody cares who diddles who as long as they are adults and can give consent. Most of us have become convinced libertarians on the drug war as well, because it only empowers two classes of criminal gangs -- the cartels and the imperial militarized federal government.

So when the reset button gets pushed in the aftermath of the tyrants' attacks and their defeat, they lose it all. Everything. Every tool of our oppression. This is something they should think about before they rouse their own people to righteous anger. They will lose everything they hold most dear -- their power over us, their position, their appetite for our liberty, our property and our lives. That is what "reset" means to them in the context of the civil war they are determined to have. Everything.

Before the Khmer Rouge came to power, Buddhism was much more than a religion in Cambodia. The temple, or wat, was not only a religious place but in most areas of the country also served as the primary school and center of social and intellectual life. Pali schools flourished as early as the 13th Century. By official count, there were more than 4,000 temples and 66,000 monks--1% of the population--before the Khmer Rouge came to power. A government statement in April, 1989, noted that the Khmer Rouge had executed more than 25,000 monks, including the chief monk, Huot Tat, and destroyed 1,968 temples and monasteries. -- "Buddhism Rising Again From the Ashes of Cambodia," LA Times, 19 June 1990.

Mindful that the Democrat Party is a collectivist party just like its foreign counterparts, I guess this is just what they do. Maybe someone could ask the Mayor of Memphis when he intends an ethnic cleansing of white folks from his city?

The Prophet Jirjis mosque in Mosul, Iraq, after the Islamic State got done with it.

LATER: Here is my letter to the editor of the Memphis Commercial Appeal:

Mindful of the Mayor's proposal of cultural cleansing by removing the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue as well as his remains, can someone tell me the functional difference between him and the collectivist cultural assassins of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria? I realize that he is a member of America's collectivist party, the Democrats, but this proposal seems a bit much even for them. Of course Nathan Bedford Forrest was a life-long Democrat, so I can see why the Mayor would like to engage in some Orwellian "down the memory hole" erasure of history.

If he wants to do something useful, why doesn't he put some city resources to bear on making Fort Pickering a first class interpretative historic site? The fort was home to the 55th and 59th United States Colored Troops who fought magnificently at Brice's Crossroads against the very man whose statue now offends him after all these years. Try building up the cultural base of your town Mr. Mayor, not deconstructing it.

The United States no longer has, as the Constitution designed, a government composed of executive, legislative and judicial branches, separate, but equal in power. The federal government is now an alliance of branches, devoted to the preservation of government itself, separate, not from each other, but from the American people and dedicated to tyranny. The policies pursued by the Obama Administration and facilitated by cowardly politicians and a compliant media are not simply the intersection of radical ideology and incompetence, but a dangerous subversive element of an anti-American and anti-Western strategy.

2. a system or planned way of doing things, especially one imposed from above.

Were I still a godless Marxist, I would be thrilled at the self-inflicted wounds that the regime worked upon itself this week. Collectivists of all stripes see in chaos that there is opportunity. They also know that regime legitimacy is everything and a collapsed regime is necessary before people become desperate enough to entrust their futures to such jackals.

But even as staunch an anti-communist as I am now -- as hard-nosed a supporter of the Founders' Republic and the Constitution as I have become -- I can see that the regime has dealt itself a crippling blow to its own legitimacy. I further note with somber acknowledgement that as bad as this confluence of events is for the country as a whole that it makes our job easier for it confirms everything we have been saying about the regime of both corrupt political parties being destructive of liberty and the rule of law. This will swell our ranks with people who are finally convinced that for the purposes of protecting our liberties, the present system has broken down completely and that the only thing we can count on from this point on is ourselves, alone. And our rifles. I will not celebrate this as a Marxist would but I will give a most sincere, albeit grim, "thank you" to the Supreme Court and the two predatory gangs of a tyrannical regime.

From the corrupt deal-making of the ExIm bank and the "free trade fast-track" authority to the black robed bandits of the Supreme Court upholding both a patently unconstitutional Obama Care and equally offensive "gay marriage" decision, to the hysteria over the Confederate flag, both parties have let their joined-at-the-hip symbiotic conspiracy against the rest of us show for all to see. The Emperor not only has no clothes, he waving his private parts at us and expecting us to worship them.

"And now it's all so obvious: This isn't tolerance. This is a new cultural civil war -- a brazen attempt to marginalize, demonize and ultimately eliminate all images, symbolism, art and free expression that does not obediently fall in line with the narrative of the political left."

Listening yesterday to the radio as I traveled, sick as a dog as I was, to a previously scheduled meeting over in Georgia, you could hear the anguish and the anger. Summed up, the comments boiled down to this: "What will we do now that both political parties and the entire system seems linked in a conspiracy against our liberties?" The answer, of course, is resistance -- armed civil disobedience -- on a vast scale. This is the gift the regime handed us this week. They convinced an incredible number of people that previously were complacent and that we could not reach to seek other remedies, even Second Amendment remedies. The regime has, by the events of this week, nuked its own legitimacy. Our jobs will be easier after this. Get busy.

"This is a huge disappointment for the Second Amendment community, and it's not a good omen for the Republicans in the state Senate," Nojay said. "They always ask for our support for the past two and a half years. They have failed to deliver on anything."

Wars start because of political failures. With 95% of NY firearm owners refusing to comply with the SAFE Act, the likelihood of someone getting shot and touching off a larger conflagration continues. Blame the political douchebags of the GOP.

We're working on shipping direct (at long last) from a list I suspect may be incomplete. The following are city/town addresses. For those of you who have paid for shirts and not yet received them, and you don't see your destination on this list, please send me an email with the approximate date of order, number, size and color. Some orders were apparently shipped and lost in transition and it is possible that some others had paperwork that was misplaced. Please advise me if you still have orders hanging out for destinations not on this list.

Friday, June 26, 2015

This trip is proving to be harder to recover from than usual since I apparently picked up some contagion -- my bet from the throat-on-fire-hard-to-breathe feeling is strep throat. Still I'm committed today to do some things that were scheduled before the trip, so I'm off to do that. I'll give you more posts, including a tee shirt update, later today. I am painfully aware of those of you who have not yet received yours. Also, I will be putting out another appeal for legal defense funds for Anthony Bosworth of Liberty For All in WA state who has been targeted by the Feds. But that will be later this afternoon.

History furnishes one example only of a first magistrate being formally brought to public justice. Every body cried out against this as unconstitutional. What was the practice before this, in cases where the chief magistrate rendered himself obnoxious? Why, recourse was had to assassination, in which he was not only deprived of his life, but of the opportunity of vindicating his character. It would be the best way, therefore, to provide in the Constitution for the regular punishment of the executive, where his misconduct should deserve it, and for his honorable acquittal, where he should be unjustly accused. -- Benjamin Franklin at the time of the consideration of the Constitution' quoted in "Impeachment and Assassination" by Josh Chafetz.

I'm running behind on my posts. Also, there were no videos taken of my speeches or my classes, so I'm going to replicate them from here and will post on YouTube. The problem is that I don't have a video camera or even phone capable of taking suitable footage. I do have a reader who is volunteering to pick me one up so that I can get started with sending out these and other blocks of instruction on armed civil disobedience, 4GW, improvised munitions, etc. Neither of us know what to buy, however. Do you have suggestions as to the best compromise of capability, quality and price at the moment. Idiot proof would also help. In addition, there should be a way to obtain the best sound quality in a small package, since videos with pristine pictures and crappy sound don't get watched. Suggestions?

Despite the dim odds of imminent action, Democrats said that eventually pressure on Congress to restrict access to guns will be too much to resist. “We’re in a marathon, not a sprint,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “And it may not be achievable this session, but it will happen because we’re on the right side of history.”

No, the collectivist bastards never quit. And we're facing more fights against Bloomberg in Nevada and Arizona. Not to mention maintaining the armed civil disobedience in NY, CT, MD, CO, WA and OR.

I have learned how to safely make my own primers using H-48 primer compound and have had excellent success (i.e. 99%+ reliability). I also have had excellent success reloading primers using toy caps. The only drawback to the "easy" methods is that these primer compounds produce corrosive by-products that require you to quickly clean the gun barrel with hot water after a shooting session. This was standard practice until the end of WWII when non-corrosive primers finally replaced corrosive primers in almost all ammunition. However, you can still occasionally find corrosively primed military surplus ammo from Russia, former Eastern Bloc countries, and the ChiComs for sell.

I am slowly assembling the needed chemicals to make several non-corrosive primer formulations. It requires a little wet chemistry to synthesize a few intermediates, but once done it is possible to make exactly the same primer formulations that commercial ammunition companies use. Working with high energy percussion sensitive compounds is not everyone's cup of tea and there is a real element of danger. It helps if you are a chemist (which I am) and work with very small amounts of compound at a time. This is like the holy grail to me and once successfully accomplished will probably end my primer experiments until I need to make them for real.

In any case, I no longer have any fear of being unable to reload ammunition should the authorities try to cut-off supplies of projectiles, primers, or powder. All of these can be made from re-purposed off-the-shelf items. For example, ammonium nitrate is commonly used as the drying agent in products that are sold to keep things dry in your closet or clothes dresser. It is also used in instant cold bags that are used to treat bruises and burns. This kind of information is available on the internet now, but may not be after a government caused crisis. I encourage any interested persons to research these things now. It will be too late to learn how to do it after the grid goes down.

Just because I can does not mean I want to make my own primers. After the last primer shortage (November 2012-2014, yep, 2 years long), I have been laying in a stockpile of primers that should keep me in ammo for a very long time (I buy them whenever I find a good deal, just found S&B primers at Cabelas for $19.99/1000). Same thing with projectiles and powder. So, when some collectivist idiot proposes cutting off the supply of ammunition as a form of gun control, there are many thousands like myself who will not be affected in the least. We also make ammunition that is equal to or better than any you can buy. I reload for every common pistol and rifle caliber people use today (and a few that aren't so common). I figure that ammo would make a pretty good currency in a post dollar barter based economy.

Just thought you might want to know that many of us are prepared for the worse. We will also help keep our freedom loving brothers in arms locked and loaded.

Starting a bloody civil war seems an odd way to "fight gun violence." In fact, if you want to see what real "gun violence" is, try to repeal the Second Amendment and watch the carnage that results. To free Americans, advice from self-neutered Europeans on liberty is like getting sexual tips from eunuchs. Just tell us, if you will, how many uncompromising firearm owners' deaths (and of their families) do you require before you would consider such a benighted, benevolent proposal requiring the iron hand of state violence against its own citizens to have been worth it? A hundred thousand? A million? Six million? Ten? If you want to get your way, you will have to kill us first. Just tell us how many of our deaths you require, you bloodthirsty collectivist. How many? Think it through and give us an answer now. We're waiting.

If "diversity" is good, why do liberals congregate in lily-white enclaves like Vermont (the whitest state in the Union, according to the Census) and Marin County, California? White liberals hector others incessantly about the need for "diversity," but most have no interest in living in neighborhoods with large numbers of blacks. The ideal society in the liberal mind always seems to be a Scandinavian socialist one (which is to say that liberals strive to make the U.S. more like some of the most uniformly white nations in the world).

A collectivist ninny in the "field of Peace and Conflict Transformation" has a modest proposal: "Repeal the Second Amendment." My comment (although I doubt it will stay up long.

Starting a bloody civil war seems an odd way to "fight gun violence." In fact, if you want to see what real "gun violence" is, try to repeal the Second Amendment and watch the carnage that results. C'mon. We'll make it easy -- we won't fire the first shot. Your side, if you want to get what you want, must do that. Of course, given the ironclad Law of Unintended Consequences, intellectual apologists for tyranny such as yourself are unlikely to survive such a conflict, so does that make you brave or stupid? I'm leaning toward suicidally stupid, but you tell me. Follow through on your logic at least and tell us how many uncompromising firearm owners' deaths (and of their families) do you require before you would consider such a benighted, benevolent proposal requiring the iron hand of state violence against its own citizens to have been worth it? A hundred thousand? A million? Six million? Ten? If you want to get your way, you will have to kill us first. Just tell us how many of our deaths you require, you bloodthirsty collectivist. How many? Think it through and give us an answer now. -- Mike Vanderboegh, Pinson, AL

As I wrote before the event, the authorities were not going to interfere with the Arms Expo because to do so would have been a strategic mistake of colossal proportions. (Thus making the local Facebook commandos -- who publicly declared their chicken little predictions and warnings to others not to attend -- the instruments of their own outing as cravenly cowards.)

Stuck as I was at Dallas-Forth Worth waiting for planes that never came in, I had many a conversation with other passengers in purgatory. I was amazed at how many people freely shared their own fears for the future and, more importantly, their very specific preparations to meet the events of economic/socital collapse, three-sided race war, civil war against a tyrannical government or some combination of all three.

What came through these conversations was this: There is some considerable slice of the citizenry who are psychologically and physically prepared to resist tyranny in any form -- far more than the tyrants are prepared to deal with them. It is also plain, as I have written and said many, many times, that the Obama regime has thrown away its legitimacy, its "Mandate of Heaven," with an ever increasing number of its citizens. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO OVER-EXAGGERATE WHAT THIS MAY MEAN IN THE VERY NEAR FUTURE.

In my blocks of instruction that I taught at the Arms Expo this weekend, I hit these points pretty hard. I also recommended to all that they obtain a copy of Dr. Joe Strange's book Capital 'W' War. Strange illustrates one example of this process and how failed legitimacy and the limits of military power combine to produce a strategic failure of the "credible capacity to coerce" that have particular relevance to the discussion about a possible American 4th Generation Warfare civil conflict in the 21st Century. (Fusion center analysts please take note.)

In 1807 Napoleon's empire was very impressive, but
England -- the hated enemy -- remained undefeated and defiant. To
weaken England by economic warfare, Napoleon sent part of his army into
the Iberian Peninsula to compel Portugal to participate in the
Continental System. Even though Spain was his ally in this affair,
Napoleon took advantage of the presence of French troops in Spain
(ostensibly on their way to Portugal) to convert the Spanish Monarchy
into a "more reliable" ally against Britain.

After considering a
few options, Napoleon decided to place his own brother, Joseph, on the
throne, and issued 'secret orders for the arrest of the Spanish Royal
Family. This 'secret' soon sprung a leak, resulting in a spontaneous
popular uprising in Madrid on the 2nd of May 1808 (the Dos de Mayo) and
the deaths of many 'surprised' French soldiers. But the French
contingent in Madrid quickly rallied and retaliated with ruthless
countermeasures. Shortly thereafter, Joseph entered Spain along with
the bulk of the French Army (which for a time was led by Napoleon
himself). Over the next several months, the French smashed one Spanish Army after another (with few exceptions).

When studying the Peninsular War, we often tend to focus on the
military assistance provided to the Portuguese and Spanish by the
British (first under Moore and then Wellington). This emphasis does not
do justice to the resistance offered by the Portuguese, or the vast
majority of the Spanish people who were lead by local partisan leaders,
by army generals who here and there still commanded small numbers of
regular troops, and by hundreds of priests and monks.

The
Portuguese used scorched earth tactics under the direction of
Wellington. In Spain, the French occupation armies encountered
guerrilla and partisan warfare, the nature and scale of which has seldom
been seen in modern military history. That resistance was
characterized by a vicious cycle of brutality. In sieges reminiscent of
the Middle Ages, whole towns and cities fought to the last man, woman
and child. Moreover, these towns and cities were surrounded by
thousands of square miles of rugged terrain ideally suited for
partisan/guerrilla warfare.

There are many typical anecdotes;
here is just one: Four French soldiers (perhaps stragglers) were
foraging for food. They came to a small house. Inside was a woman and
her small child. The woman said she had no food, but the soldiers found
some 'hidden' in the attic. still not trusting the woman, they made
her feed some of the food to her own child, which she did. The soldiers
then ate. Soon (but too late for them) one of them noticed the child
turning blue. The mother had poisoned her own child for the purpose of
poisoning for enemy soldiers. Before they died, the soldiers brutally
bayoneted both mother and child.

Partisan warfare throughout
Spain was so widespread and so intense that it required an escort of
4,000 French cavalry just to get a message from Madrid to Paris and vice
versa. The French occupation army, including allied units, lost 50,000
dead per year (to fighting and disease) for six years before it
retreated back into France early in 1814. After his exile to a small
island in the South Atlantic (after his final defeat at Waterloo),
Napoleon called this six-year nightmare "His Spanish Ulcer."

The
Peninsular War was just the opposite of the kind of war he had
successfully waged against earlier conventional opponents such as
Austria and Prussia. It was partisan-guerrilla war of truly national
proportions. It took on elements of a class war between the Spanish
upper and lower classes. And it took on a religious character that Napoleon never appreciated.

THE ROOT OF NAPOLEON'S FAILURE.

What
lay at the root of Napoleon's failure in Spain? . . . Napoleon the
statesman had set Napoleon the soldier an impossible task . . .
(A)lthough the immediate military means were more or less achieved, the
long-term requirement of winning popular support for the new regime was
hopelessly compromised. The lesson was there for the world to read:
military conquest in itself cannot bring about a political victory.
This was by no means a new lesson, but seldom in history has it been so
amply demonstrated. -- David G. Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon,
New York, Macmillan Publishing, 1966, p. 660.

LEGITIMACY. Napoleon, his brother Joseph, and the French armies had none -- NONE AT
ALL -- in the minds and hearts of the Spanish people. How about the
credible capacity to coerce? There is a difference between the capacity
to "kill" and the capacity to "coerce." Depending on the political
context and the methods of killing, killing can be a productive
component of coercion or it can be counter-productive. "Credible
Coercion" is defined by the target of the coercion; that is, by the WILL
of the target. The Spanish people decided that their will demonstrated that French Army's great capacity to kill did not translate into a credible capacity to coerce.

THE LIMITS OF MILITARY POWER.

The
French occupation army numbered roughly 300,000 troops more or less
throughout the six year war. Given Napoleon's failure to admit that he
had made a fundamental political mistake, given his refusal to
compromise, and given his penchant to blame his generals for every
military setback, and given that Napoleon the Emperor had created a
problem that no general could solve with military power alone -- 300,000
troops were not enough. There were many French victories, but no
peace.

FATAL ASSUMPTIONS

Napoleon made four poor assumptions, the consequences of which were fatal. In that sense, Napoleon the Emperor was the worst enemy of Napoleon the General.

(1) The Emperor assumed that because
members of the Spanish upper class supported Joseph as King, the Spanish
masses would offer only passive resistance, if any. Instead, the war
in Spain took on elements of an ugly class war.

(2) The Emperor
assumed that there was a modestly large Spanish bourgeois (middle) class
which would welcome the secular reforms and economic benefits of the
French Revolution, as had been the case in France when the Revolutionary
Government confiscated and sold Church lands to raise money and lower
taxes on the middle class. Therefore . . .

(3) When Catholic
priests and monks actively opposed the French to preserve Church lands
and influence in Spanish society, Napoleon assumed that all Spaniards
would see their actions as self-serving (as he did) and therefore that
calls for popular resistance by the priests and monks would fall on deaf
ears.

(4) Finally, those three assumptions led Napoleon the
Emperor to a seemingly logical fourth assumption: all Spanish resistance
will end with the defeat of Spain's conventional armies.

NAPOLEON
THE EMPEROR WAS WRONG ON ALL FOUR COUNTS. He misjudged the Spanish
people, the extent of their pride, the tenacity of their religious
faith, and their loyalty to their own (Spanish) King. He thereby
underestimated the severity of the military task facing him. "If I
thought it would cost me 80,000 men I would not attempt it," he blandly
asserted, "but it will cost me no more than 12,000." The price he
paid for his arrogance and ignorance was not 12,000, but 300,000 French
and allied soldiers, and ultimately his own empire and throne. --
Capitol "W" War, Dr. Joe Strange, 1998, pp. 187-191.

"The price he paid for his arrogance and ignorance was . . . ultimately his own empire and throne." Today's tyrant wannabes, especially Barack Obama, ought to remember that.

But, for all their admonitions, it will remain a fact that nobody in a black robe or a powdered wig is instructing the American public to buy record numbers of guns, to apply for millions of concealed-carry permits, to demand the liberalization of their state laws, to take up shooting for the first time, or to tell pollsters that they side with the Second Amendment rather than with the sort of restrictive legislation that we see abroad. For better or for worse, the lion’s share of the pro–Second Amendment energy that has marked the last 25 years has come not from the judge’s gavel but from political shifts at the local and national levels. The quandary that the reformers face can be summed up simply: Were we the sort of culture that would be willing to repeal the Second Amendment, we would be the sort of culture that would not need to do so.

My flight out of Dallas Forth Worth kept getting delayed until when we finally boarded at a little after three. Then, a seat arm rest fell apart and had to be duct-taped together by maintenance before the plane could leave the ground. I kid you not. Finally got in to Birmingham around 5PM and Rosey picked me up. We went to celebrate a successful trip with a bite to eat and then went home where the day's end hit me like a ton of bricks and I just now awoke to try to play catchup.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Will try to post some links this am from the hotel where American Airlines put me up last night. This has been a most productive trip, accidents of the journey notwithstanding (including a broken tooth that I did to myself).

LATER: Well, the hotel computer is not cooperating with cut and paste so I'll have to wait until I'm home.

Monday, June 22, 2015

"Thanks to the excellent instructions published by M.Chandler at http://web.archive.org/web/20090109164453/http://users.ameritech.net/mchandler/primer.html, I finally found a practical method of converting .217" Berdan brass to take .210" Boxer primers. The tools I used are an RCBS primer pocket swager, a good loading press, a drill, a spare shellholder, and a ball bearing about 1/2 inch in diameter. The process is simple and quick, requiring under two minutes per case once everything is set up. It works very well for me. Once I'd made up a dozen cases, I loaded and fired 150-grain bullets with charges of WC852 from 43 to 55 grains, then reloaded and fired one case 7 times with the stiff 55-grain load. There were no gas leaks at all and the primer pocket was just about as snug after 7 load/fire cycles as it was immediately after conversion."

Ammonpulver is a very energetic powder with an energy content about equal to powders like 2400, Blue Dot, or Bullseye, which are all quite powerful. Its burn rate is controlled the same way as other powders by changing the grain size, and I found that the ammonpulver I made ranged in burn rate from about IMR3031 or IMR4895 down to around IMR4350 in granulations about like corn meal on down to Cream of Wheat, the finer the granulation the faster it burns. It is also flashless as well as a truly smokeless powder, the combustion products are nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and water in the form of steam; all of which are clear colorless gases. Because of the inevitable ash from the wood charcoal, a very tiny amount of smoke in the form of a colloidal dust is briefly seen, and when the temperature is low and humidity high the condensed steam is also seen as "smoke" that very rapidly disappears.

As has already been mentioned, ammonpulver is simply a finely ground mixture of carefully dried ammonium nitrate and charcoal (ammonium nitrate is highly hygroscopic and readily absorbs moisture from the air and when left out in the open it turns into a soupy puddle), the range of proportions that prove useful are from about 80% ammonium nitrate and 20% charcoal, to 90% ammonium nitrate and 10% charcoal. The chemically balanced equation gives very close to 86.96% ammonium nitrate and 13.04% charcoal (87% and 13% are close enough). However, I did all my experiments with the most commonly used proportions of 85% ammonium nitrate and 15% dead-burnt charcoal. It is of utmost importance to use dead-burnt charcoal since the creosotes left from partially roasted wood make the powder unstable and possibly subject to spontaneous ignition. The partially roasted wood charcoal that was used for canon powder by the U.S. Navy in the 1890s is probably what blew up the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba in 1898, setting off the Spanish American War. At the time in 1898, it was rumored that a Spanish torpedo or sea mine was responsible for the Maine sinking, however later problems with auto-ignition of the so-called "cocoa powder" made using partially roasted charcoal that was still a reddish-brown color is most likely what ignited the canon powder magazine aboard the Maine, blowing it up and sinking it in seconds. Anyway, to be safe, the charcoal used for making ammonpulver should conduct electricity, ensuring that it is dead burnt and has no creosote left in it.

Saturday, June 20, 2015

I'd like to speak to you about the uniqueness of what we are doing here today and the efforts we are making to deal with this unprecedented event and how it effects the way we're handling the competing interests of the participants and the press. First of all, I'd like to thank y'all for coming and taking your courage in your own two hands and braving the uncertainties to be here. In looking out at you I see the Founders descendants, only the Founders didn't have to deal with the modern surveillance state. There were no cameras at the Boston Tea Party, the Green Dragon Tavern where the Sons of Liberty met was not bugged by the secret political police of Ministry of Homeland Security, the Committees of Correspondence did not have their communications photographed by the Royal Mail, General Gage did not possess surveillance drones and Captain Parker was not plagued by agents provocateurs within his own ranks working for the King and determined to discredit the Patriot cause by goading them into firing first. It is fortunate for us that King George did not possess these instruments of tyranny. But the fact of the matter is that Barack Obama and his minions do possess them. So when you come here today, you are, I believe, exhibiting every bit as much courage as the Founders, for you do face these threats and still you refuse to comply. By your very presence here today, you are sending the message: WE WILL NOT COMPLY WITH THE INSTRUMENTS OF OUR OWN SLAVERY.

But how does this new reality impact us? You are here. The press is, or will be, here. But the fact of the matter is that there's gonna be some good old fashioned Sons of Liberty tyranny-breakin' goin' on here today and the event organizers are doing their best to balance the competing interests of the participants and the press. How? Well, first of all we have a First Amendment area set up for the press. We will be providing folks for them to interview throughout the day but they will not be allowed to roam freely in the event area. They will, I am sure, try to interview folks going in and coming out of the venue. Whether you talk them or not is strictly up to you. But I would urge caution because remember, there's going to be some tyranny-defyin' goin' on here and anything you say, your identity, even your presence, may later be of interest to an unscrupulous state prosecutor who wants to enforce unconstitutional laws. The other thing is that there are groups out there -- and the Southern Poverty Law Center comes first to mind -- who specialize in masquerading as press, or who circulate through crowds at these events, asking provocative questions whose answers they can later use out of context to discredit people. Pretending to be participants, they take surveillance photos that they will later provide to their symbiotic agents of social control in the FBI and the DHS. This should come as no surprise. It is what they do. It is not for nothing that we in Alabama call them the Southern Preposterous Lie Center. But you should expect that. They are collectivists therefore they are liars. It is who they are. You might as well blame a rattlesnake for biting. But the thing is, they are not as noble as the rattlesnake because they give you no warning before striking. These folks are copperheads, people, pretending to be what they are not, so be advised.

As for the real press, this situation puts them at some risk as well. Anything they do here today, interviews, picture taking, video, may later haul them before a grand jury. This is a direct danger to their First Amendment rights to do their job without threat or interference. So as much as they might chafe under the restrictions of the First Amendment zone, I hope they understand that we're trying to look out for their own interests as well as yours. After all, at the Bundy Ranch the press agreed to a First Amendment zone so it's not the first time they've experienced this. So it's not as great a challenge as, say, asking Hillary Clinton a serious question about Benghazi, or anything.

So, that being said, we will proceed as best we can to have a great event today, to celebrate our rights and responsibilities as free American citizens, and to nullify with our defiance Mike Bloomberg's hateful unconstitutional law, purchased at the cost of his millions. American jurisprudence has long held that an unconstitutional law is null and void. But by your presence here today, you will nullify I-594 more directly and immediately. If it is later found to be "officially" unconstitutional, it will be redundant -- FOR YOU HERE WILL HAVE NULLIFIED IT LONG BEFORE. And may God bless you for having the courage to be here. Somewhere, Sam Adams and all the Founding generation are smiling.

In preparing for my presentations on improvised munitions tomorrow and Sunday, I ran across this description by David Iliff Richardson of ammunition production behind the lines during world War II. It is more proof, if any were needed, of the futility of firearms confiscation.

After the battle of Baybay our army's first problem -- more immediate even than establishing a civil government and getting paid -- was ammunition. They had shot off almost everything they had. Besides, they had been using battery separators and battery terminal lead as well as other soft metals for their bullets. With soft metal like that, you fire a few times and the rifling of the barrel fills up. Then you get a recoil that knocks you ten feet.

The whole ordnance problem became my baby. I had made a deal with Colonel McLish (another guerrilla unit leader, before leaving him, for four thousand empty .30 caliber cartridges. We'd load them and give him back one thousand loaded cartridges in exchange. I found a kid named Kuizon to organize an ordnance factory for us. We scrounged around and got a hand forge, some hack saws, and a file. That was the small-arms factory.

This boy Kuizon did all the experimenting. He was about twenty-one, the son of a pharmacist from Bato. He had never been in the army before, but I made him a third lieutenant because he was so ingenious and willing.

We foraged in schoolhouses for the bullets to fill the shells. The brass curtain rods there were made of a good hard metal just a little thicker than a .30 caliber bullet. We cut the rod up into appropriate lengths, then filed the end down to point it. There was an old broken-down Springfield rifle there, and they'd stick the bullet in this, thake a rod and try to run it through, If it went, it fit. If it didn't, they'd file some more.

For the primer, we used sulphur mixed with coconut shell carbon. Later we were able to get hold of some antimony and add it to the mixture. Then it worked 80 to 90 percent efficiently. Our main source of powder was from Japanese sea mines that we would dismantle, We;d mix in pulverized wood to retard the burning because mine powder is too violent for a rifle bullet. It took us blowing up about five rifles -- blowing off the firing pins, the extractors, and the bolts -- to find out about that.

All measuring was done rudely, by thumb and by guess and by God. You'd pour the powder into the cartridge with a little homemade funnel sort of thing until you thought you had enough. Then you'd put the piece off the brass curtain rod into the cartridge and crimp the cartridge around it with a pair of pliers. Presto, you had a bullet. Each bullet had to be tested for fit because all our cartridges had been fired once or twice or four times before. We'd load and extract each bullet. If the shoulder was too big, we'd crimp it down. If it was too small, we'd say that was fine.

Getting the right measure for the mixture was Kuizon's business. It was all trial and error. When there was an error, the cartirdges would blow up in the gun. Powder flashes would come out between the bolts and burn his hands. One morning he broke three rifles in succession, burning his hands three times and jolting his shoulder so badly his toes ached.

"Sir, I do not like to do this work, sir," he admitted finally. "I will put the rifle on the table, sir, and test by long distance, sir."

Finally we managed to dragoon an apothecary's scales and after a few more tests "by long distance" no more rifles blew up. Using this ammunition was hard on our guns, but it worked and killed a Jap to beat hell. The boys liked them because the mine powder gave the bullets so much power they never had to figure windage.

Our ordnance factory never filled more than a one-room house, about twenty feet by ten. But we expanded it to making extractors and firing pins out of such steel as we could find -- usually spring steel. These weren't very successful, but they worked fine for a dozen rounds. I put sixty soldiers to work in the ordnance plant, but the filing of the brass curtain rods to fit took so long that our production never got better than an average of 160 bullets a day.

So, dear readers, the next time you are tempted to complain about the price or availability of ammunition, remember the guerrillas of the Philippines. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but to those who are constrained by an absolute poverty of means, necessity can be a mother.

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.